Cultural Heritage: a critical practice's construction

Abstract

Since the end of the 19th Century, it is possible to identify critical approaches to cultural heritage preservation. This research aims to reflect about the articulation between the critical theoretical frame and the proceedings and agents involved in the contemporary conservation practice, focusing on the selections process of what should or should not be considered cultural heritage. The goal is to explore the listing process as a space that converges both theory and preservation praxis, as well as the variety of involved agents. The work will be developed through the "Casa de Chico Mendes", located in Xapuri, AC, listing process analysis. This case study will be confronted with other Brazilian historic houses in addition to analogous cases from abroad. The main bibliographic resource will be Brazilian preservation legislation, preservation charters and normative, besides the multidisciplinary literature on the Theory of Critical Restoration and the recent critical heritage studies. As a result, it is expected to identify possible instruments to articulate the different agents involved in heritage preservation along the listing process, as well as mechanisms to widen the theoretical reflection in this context. This work's main aim is to propose theoretical and methodological instruments to develop more critical and inclusive heritage selection processes, contesting the still recurrent value attribution based exclusively on monumentality criteria.